Same place,same knowledge – same people? The geography of non-patent citations in Dutch polymer patents

It has long been argued that geographic co-location supports knowledge spillovers. More recently, this argument has been challenged by showing that knowledge spillovers mainly flow through social networks, which may or may not be localized at various geographic scales. We further scrutinize the conjecture of geographically bounded knowledge spillovers by focusing on knowledge flows between academia and industry. Looking into citations to non-patent literature (NPL) in 2385 Dutch polymer patents, we find that citation lags are shorter on average if Dutch rather than foreign NPLs are cited. However, when excluding individual and organizational self-citations, geographically proximate NPLs no longer diffuse faster than foreign NPLs. This suggests that knowledge is not ‘in the air’ but transferred by mobile individuals and/or direct university–industry collaboration. Our findings moreover suggest an important role of international conferences in the diffusion of recent scientific knowledge.     

A complex systems methodology to transition management

There is a general sense of urgency that major technological transitions are required for sustainable development. Such transitions are best perceived as involving multiple transition steps along a transition path. Due to the path dependent and irreversible nature of innovation in complex technologies, an initial transition step along some preferred path may cut off paths that later may turn out to be more desirable. For these reasons, initial transition steps should allow for future flexibility, where we define flexibility as robustness regarding changing evidence and changing preferences. We propose a technology assessment methodology based on rugged fitness landscapes, which identifies the flexibility of initial transition steps in complex technologies. We illustrate our methodology by an empirical application to 2,646 possible future car systems.

Young Adolescents and Advertising on Social Network Games: A Structural Equation Model of Perceived Parental Media Mediation,Advertising Literacy,and Behavioral Intention

This study tested a model in which perceived parental media mediation in social network games (SNGs) was related to adolescents' conceptual and attitudinal advertising literacies, both of which were in turn related to purchase request intention. The 780 participants, aged between 10 and 14 years, watched a video clip of SNG Habbo that included a commercial message and then completed a questionnaire. Perceived autonomy-supportive restrictive media mediation was found to be positively associated with understanding selling intention. Perceived autonomy-supportive active media mediation was positively related to understanding persuasive intention. Understanding persuasive intention was positively related to purchase request intention.     

Testing for correlation in error-component models

This paper concerns linear models for grouped data with group-specific effects. We construct a portmanteau test for the null of no within-group correlation beyond that induced by the group-specific effect. The approach allows for heteroskedasticity and is applicable to models with exogenous, predetermined, or endogenous regressors. The test can be implemented as soon as three observations per group are available and is applicable to unbalanced data. A test with such general applicability is not available elsewhere. We provide theoretical results on size and power under asymptotics where the number of groups grows but their size is held fixed. Extensive power comparisons with other tests available in the literature for special cases of our setup reveal that our test compares favorably. In a simulation study we find that, under heteroskedasticity, only our procedure yields a test that is both size correct and powerful. In a large data set on mothers with multiple births we find that infant birthweight is correlated across children even after controlling for mother fixed effects and a variety of prenatal care factors. This suggests that such a strategy may be inadequate to take care of all confounding factors that correlate with the mother's decision to engage in activities that are detrimental to the infant's health, such as smoking.     

Antecedents and consequences of performance management enactment by front-line managers. Evidence from Belgium

Although researchers have extensively stressed the critical role of line managers in the effective implementation of HR practices, little is known about what exactly causes managers to enact these practices. In this paper, we draw from signaling theory, theory of planned behavior and social exchange theory to investigate both the antecedents and the outcomes of front-line management’s enactment of performance management (PM) activities. Results from two Belgian samples of 731 front-line managers and 425 employees show that line management’s beliefs regarding the usefulness of PM activities mediate the relationship between HR support and line management’s implicit person theory, on the one hand, and PM enactment, on the other. This relationship is moderated by the manager’ span of control. Furthermore, line management enactment shows to be positively related to employee engagement and job satisfaction.     

More reforms,less innovation? The impact of structural reform histories on innovation-oriented cultures in public organizations

The environments of public organizations have become substantially volatile due to economic and societal changes, requiring organizations to continuously adapt and to develop an innovation-oriented culture. In response to the multitude of challenges posed by this volatile environment, politicians in inter alia the executive and parliament impose structural reforms upon public organizations, implying that these organizations might be confronted with a series of structural reforms over their lifetime. This paper advances that a history of repeated and frequent structural reforms, irrespective of the underlying drivers of these reforms, has a negative effect on the innovation-orientedness of the organizational culture. We explore the link between an organization’s history of structural reforms and the degree to which the culture within these organizations is innovation-oriented. Results indicate that organizational turmoil generated by repeated structural reforms reduces innovativeness and suggest that too many structural reforms imposed in a too short time span will have detrimental side effects.     

The effect of the elapsed time between the initial refusal and conversion contact on conversion success: evidence from the 2nd round of the European social survey

The hold period between the initial refusal and the follow-up conversion attempt may be used as a strategic tool to improve conversion rates. We argue that longer hold periods result in better conversion rates, particularly among hard-to-convert refusals. In this article we will first investigate to what extend and in which manner survey authorities exert this elapsed time as an active survey instrument. Contact sheet data show that different national survey coordinators deploy different strategies with regard to this hold period. In the Netherlands, intentional survey tactics can be disentangled, whereas Swiss contact data show that the length of the hold period is a mere result other fieldwork conditions. Actual conversion success seems to be consistently dependent upon the hold period between the initial refusal and the follow-up contact.     

Qualitative One-to-Many Multi-Issue Negotiation: Approximating the QVA

When there is one buyer interested in obtaining a service from one of a set of sellers, multi-attribute or multi-issue auctions can ensure an allocation that is efficient. Even when there is no transferable utility (e.g., money), a recent qualitative version of the Vickrey auction may be used, the QVA, to obtain a Pareto-efficient outcome where the best seller wins. However, auctions generally require that the preferences of at least one party participating in the auction are publicly known, while often making this information public is costly, undesirable, or even impossible. It would therefore be useful to have a method that does not impose such a requirement, but is still able to approximate the outcome of such an auction. The main question addressed here is whether the Pareto-efficient best-seller outcome in multi-issue settings without transferable utility (such as determined by the QVA) can be reasonably approximated by multi-bilateral closed negotiation between a buyer and multiple sellers. In these closed negotiations parties do not reveal their preferences explicitly, but make alternating offers. The main idea is to have multiple rounds of such negotiations. We study three different variants of such a protocol: one that restricts the set of allowed offers for both the buyer and the seller, one where the winning offer is announced after every round, and one where the sellers are only told whether they have won or not after every round. It is shown experimentally that this protocol enables agents that can learn preferences to obtain agreements that approximate the Pareto-efficient best-seller outcome as defined by the auction mechanism. We also show that the strategy that exploits such a learning capability in negotiation is robust against and dominates a Zero Intelligence strategy. It thus follows that the requirement to publicly announce preferences can be removed when negotiating parties are equipped with the proper learning capabilities and negotiate using the proposed multi-round multi-bilateral negotiation protocol.